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“You didn’t feel that lurch? It felt like we made a really sharp turn or something.” Rose continues. “I think something is happening.”
I sit up and glance around. The lights in the cargo bay are on, now, but they’re only a dim glow and I can just barely make out the others. Rose is standing at her cell door with her hands tightly wrapped around the bars. The others are still on their beds, waiting expectantly to see what will happen.
The cargo bay is quiet and heavy with anxiety, making the hum of the engines sound even louder. The tense atmosphere is broken with gasps and squeals as the ship lists hard to one side. The movement nearly throws me to the floor, but at the last second, I manage to grab onto the metal frame of my bed. Chaos explodes all around me. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Emily is bleeding from a wound on her head and she’s slowly sliding across the floor of her cell.
The ship makes a quick turn in the opposite direction, and I hang on for dear life as the momentum tries to pull me from the relative safety of my bed. In the din of shouts that ring out, I just barely notice a loud bang in the distance. The whole spaceship trembles in response.
Oh shit, is someone shooting at us?
Another bang follows, louder this time, and the ship shudders violently. The lights flicker, then go out completely and we’re plunged into darkness. Seconds later, there’s a loud whirring noise and emergency lights blink on bathing the room in a red glow. The whoosh of the door sounds as it opens, and I look over to see Zaez stumble inside.
“Zaez! What’s happening?” I shout as he lurches across the room.
“The Alliance Force is pursuing the ship, and we are being fired upon. I do not think the captain will surrender. I have come to warn you, you must prepare for impact. Your cells are equipped with safety straps in case of a crash.” Zaez answers my question in a rush, his voice higher pitched than normal in his agitation. As soon as he’s finished talking, he disappears back through the door hurrying away.
“The bathrooms! Everyone, head to the bathroom in your cell. I saw the straps earlier, they’re next to the toilet.” Emily surprises us all by unsteadily rising from where she has been thrown to the floor and shouting out orders.
I slither off my bed and painstakingly edge my way over to the small bathroom in my cell, all while explosions echo in the distance and the floor rumbles beneath my feet.
The little room is barely wide enough for me to fit inside with a metal bowl that sticks out from one wall that serves as a space-age toilet. There is no door, so technically it’s probably more of an alcove than an actual room or even a closet.
I spy the black straps just where Emily said they would be, and I quickly sink to the floor with my back against one wall and secure the straps over my shoulders and around my waist. Bracing my legs against the other wall, I can’t believe that my survival depends on what basically looks like a couple of bungee cords.
Safety presentations on every flight I’ve ever been on run through my head and I quickly assume the brace position I’ve seen demonstrated so many times. I’ve never been a religious person, but I send up a silent prayer to whatever deities might be listening. Please let us survive this, and if we do, please, please let the Alliance Force be the good guys.
As tense minutes tick by, the explosions grow closer together and even louder with the ship violently shaking after nearly each one. It is clear the spaceship we’re in has sustained multiple direct hits, and I wonder how much longer it can continue to fly.
The red emergency lights add a sinister pall to everything as they flicker in time to the blasts. The ship lurches almost constantly, and I feel like I’m on a rollercoaster on steroids as the ship takes, what I suspect, are evasive maneuvers to try to escape whoever is pursuing us.
The straps securing me in place look like they’re stretched to the breaking point as the ship makes a sharply banked turn, but surprisingly they continue to hold me in place. The hum of the engine increases in intensity as it feels like the vessel speeds up even more.
Slowly the sounds of explosions fade away, although the ship continues to toss and turn like an out-of-control train. The whoosh of the cargo bay door sliding open leads me to lean forward as far as I can and peer around the edge of the wall.
It’s the sub-captain.
I watch as he carefully makes his way inside the room towards a panel of blinking buttons on the wall adjacent to the door. He presses a red button and a hidden panel opens. A small chair folds out from the panel and I swear it looks like a jump seat on an airplane. I watch in curiosity as he straps himself into the chair with a harness that stretches around his body.
A small device is attached to his wrist, and he raises it to his tiny slit of a mouth. “Sub-Captain Zariz reporting from cargo bay one. I am secured in the emergency seat. Begin the procedure for detachment.”
An alarm begins to blare, ear-splitting in its intensity, and the red lights continuously flash off and on in warning. With dawning horror, I realize things are about to get a whole lot worse. The cargo bay we’ve been held in is about to detach from the rest of the ship.
I duck my head back inside the bathroom and assume the same position as before. Only this time, I grab onto the small toilet bowl and grip it as tightly as I can.
A series of beeping noises and loud mechanical bumps echoes through the cargo bay, and that’s when I notice that the hum of the engines has grown quieter before it completely fades away. A sharp jolt rattles everything around me and I’m jerked forward, narrowly avoiding slamming my head against the bowl. I notice the hum of the engines has grown quieter before it completely fades away. Seconds tick by, and the quiet hum of what sounds like a much smaller engine emerges, and I can feel the slight vibrations it produces through the floor.
Minutes or hours go by – I honestly don’t know at this point – before there’s another sharp jolt, and a computerized voice rings out, cutting through the tension. The voice speaks in a different language than the shrill one that the Zyfeliks use, but the tiny chip in my head seamlessly converts the words into English.
“Habitable planet detected. No sentient lifeforms logged in the Intergalactic database. Entrance sequence initiated to planet XB13.”
Oh, shit. Ohshitohshitohshit.
A countdown sounds out. “Ten. . . Nine. . . Eight. . .”
I screw my eyes tightly closed and draw in a deep, steadying breath as the vessel begins to list to one side, readying itself to descend. In the background, the countdown continues.
“Hold on everyone!” One of the girls’ calls out, and I’m momentarily relieved to hear someone else’s voice. That relief is short lived.
“Three. . . Two. . . One. . .” The computerized voice finishes its countdown, and the vessel begins to tilt even further in one direction, and I know we’re beginning to descend through the atmosphere to an unknown planet.
